


After Ever After

by appending_fic



Category: The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-23
Updated: 2010-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/pseuds/appending_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had never wondered what would happen after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kettricken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kettricken/gifts).



She had never wondered what would happen after. But wasn't that the point of storybook worlds? You read until the last page, and then you stopped, and the story ended. You never thought about the after.

After all, _niffin_ were shapeless, terrifying things with so much power ordinary magicians dwelt in terror of them. And Alice was all of that. Shapeless. Terrifying. Powerful beyond imagination. The moment of transformation changed everything -- body, mind...soul, if Alice had ever had one. She'd never been certain about that point, and no magician had a proper explanation for it. Souls, she meant. The only thing she did know was that if she had one, it wasn't human anymore.

All this would have been more meaningful if Alice could bring herself to care. But whatever changes had been wrought had eliminated that part of her, the part that worried about her humanity.

And what was the point? She couldn't wear out anymore, like humans. She didn't need to eat or sleep or reproduce; she suspected being reduced to nothing but thought had been an attraction for magicians in the past. They would have been horrified to discover that the mind that survived the ordeal cared nothing for the goals that had driven them to become _niffin_.

Alice could remember why she'd done it, but she found it difficult to remember why all of those sparks of human life had mattered to her. She did remember the stark revulsion she'd felt when she'd looked upon the not-human. Martin, she thought its name had been. It was a human playing dress-up, trying to become a _niffin_ through study and practice when there was only one way to become a _niffin_ , and that was to lose control.

Of course, as a human, he'd never really had any control. Whatever forces had swept him along to the moment when Alice-the- _niffin_ met him, they had used him as clearly as he'd been used by other humans. And so Alice had taught him a valuable lesson that a _niffin_ would have been glad to learn. Of course, a _niffin_ would have survived the experience, but that was the risk humans took when they started asking _niffin_ for advice.

There was an uncomfortable feeling that overcame Alice whenever she thought about that moment, however, so she avoided it as much as possible. And unlike humans, she didn't need to dwell on the moment. Alice the human had died, and Alice the _niffin_ had taught a once-human a valuable lesson. And...something made her wonder why she'd left the others alone. They had been children, she thought. She'd been one, once, hadn't she?

So there were many valuable lessons she could have imparted to them. They were from another world, and she could have shown them how foolish it was to travel to other worlds. They had made magic to hurt people, and she could have shown them how easy that magic really was. They had let another human, one whose traces Alice could see painted across the world she'd stood in, use them as her puppet. Alice could have demonstrated exactly what it was like to be another's puppet.

But she had left the place. The action felt like it might have been un- _niffin_ -like, but the thought of anything trying to tell her she should do anything other than exactly as she wished filled her with amusement-rage. Who could dare believe they could make her change, and who would dare attempt to shackle a _niffin_?

Deep down, Alice suspected _niffin_ didn't have a way they were supposed to act. She certainly didn't feel like dancing across empty universes or anything.

Eventually, she followed the trails left by the humans she'd seen, briefly, in the chamber with the not-human. She remembered, vaguely, that she'd once shared their home. It didn't matter to her, but she wanted to see the world that had, presumably, once mattered to her.

It turned out it was not tremendously spectacular. There were worlds where men warred with _niffin_ , and worlds where magic was so well-known that babes could command it. There were worlds where magic could not function, where _niffin_ could be killed. And yet...

Alice spent some time observing, because she had nothing but time, and she had yet to meet another _niffin_ who offered another option.

After a time, she decided to seek out the people who had stood in that dark tomb. She thought she might have wanted to teach them something, but when Alice first laid eyes on one of them, a stocky, rounded man, she just watched. She actually found him in the world between. The word 'Neitherlands' occurred to her, but Alice dismissed it as irrelevant.

The man was trying to map the world between, which Alice knew was impossible for a human. It would take a thousand lifetimes. If she cared to, she could do it, but what would be the point? She could go exactly where she wished, as could any other _niffin_. The only reason to try would be to leave the knowledge for humans, and that...was not the sort of lesson Alice thought humans needed to learn.

She found another of the children, a tall, skinny man with a face twisted with some human emotion that Alice could no longer name. He was tying wings to his back with magic so crude it made Alice ill. She considered showing him the right way to perform such magic, but there was almost something quaint about how he struggled so hard to do what came to Alice naturally.

Alice left him, mind troubled by something she could not explain, or even recall clearly.

She found a woman in one of the distant, hidden places of this world, and for a moment, a twist of anger flashed through Alice. It was gone, then, but Alice knew that the human she had once been had been...angry with this woman. But what did it matter? The woman was trying to capture power from a world far distant from her own. Alice could have given the woman power beyond what she could ever imagine, could have broken her apart and put her back together in the shape of a mind unbound, but again, some twist to her thoughts stayed Alice's hands.

The poor woman couldn't even perceive Alice. None of them could, unless she willed it.

And Alice could almost understand that the woman had already learned an important lesson during the moment when she had stood in the same room with Alice and the not-human.

Alice fled, slipping away from the magical places of the world, and eventually found herself in the most mundane of mundane places, where a man drank in a bar with a woman, one who made Alice's whole being hurt to look at. She didn't know, actually, if it was the man or the woman, or some combination of all of it.

Power coiled around her, pained and ready to strike out, but Alice paused.

The sight of them touched something inside of her. It was not just pain. She felt some deep...sorrow? Longing?

She watched as the man turned away from the woman, and a thought, not the thought of a _niffin_ , but of a human, came to her. _Can't you ever be happy?_

The thought electrified Alice, coursed through her entire being.

God! She was a being of indescribible power. And she was spying on children! She could remember, as a human, exploring the boundaries of what was possible. Everyone said _niffin_ didn't have such boundaries. Alice didn't know if it was true.

But she'd thought, once, that she could go anywhere she wished. She could do anything she wished. What was the point of that if you didn't do anything with it?

Looking at the unhappy man, Alice realized this, more than anything a human had ever experienced, was true freedom. And the best part was that she had eternity, or as close to it, to explore that freedom.

She reached out to the unhappy man and touched him. She didn't think she wanted to teach him anything; _niffin_ lessons were harsh and painful, and, more often than not, fatal. But she saw that he had felt the touch. She felt a sort of grim satisfaction knowing that even if he didn't know what he'd felt, she had been able to leave some trace of her passing.

Alice left then, knowing she was done with these humans. They were so far below her now she couldn't imagine doing any of the things she remembered doing with them, once.

The others, she recalled, looked as if they were doing exactly as they wanted to. She wondered if the unhappy man ever would. If he would ever be happy.

Alice didn't know, but she suspected she would be pleased if she learned he ever managed it.

But sitting around waiting for that wasn't worth Alice's time. She had eternity, and the petty lives of mortals wasn't what eternity was made for.

It was made for those capable of exploring it.

In this moment, as Alice slipped beyond the world that had borne her, she decided abandoning the shape and mind and soul that she had once held was the best decision she had ever made.

And it was, for the part of her that might have disagreed had been burned away in the moment of rebirth.

But whatever the reason for it, this happiness would be enough for her. It had to be, else what would be the point?

*

Eliot slipped out onto the balcony (rather than gliding from above or flapping from the ground, as he did when he wanted to make a scene) and wrapped a companionable arm around Quentin's shoulder.

"Sometimes we make bets about what you're looking for out here," he said easily.

"Alice," Quentin replied softly, eyes pinned to the stars. "I wonder where she is, what she's doing."

"She's a _niffin_ ," Eliot replied. "She's not Alice, not in the slightest. Just power flickering along. Didn't you learn that?"

"She saved us," Quentin said. "And she left us alone. Doesn't that mean-?"

"It means the _niffin_ didn't kill us. It means we weren't worth the trouble. Is this what you've been brooding over? Alice died, and there's no way to get her back."

Quentin didn't let the cutting words hurt him. He needed to get these thoughts out, and that meant dredging up a sort of courage he'd never really had. But oddly, the words came easily to him. "I just want to think she's happy, somehow. I'd like to think _niffin_ can be happy."

Eliot snorted. "Oh, very well. I bet she's watching over us like a benevolent omnipotent spirit of magic, waiting for you to find happiness so that she can pass on to wherever _niffin_ go to have a good time. She and her brother meet on weekends for coffee and chat about old times. Honestly, Quentin, I thought you'd gotten over thinking life is like a storybook."

Quentin let the acid words slide over him because he knew the subject of Alice had wounded them all in their own way, and because Eliot had only a few ways to show that pain.

"I don't think it's foolish to hope she's happy," he said in reply. "And who knows? Maybe she did find her brother. I know she's not the same person. I know she'd be as likely to kill me as not if I met her. But is it too much to wish that enough of her survived that she can find a way to be glad about it?"

Eliot's face twitched, but he also squeezed Quentin's shoulder briefly, a mark of comfort or reassurance or apology, Quentin didn't know. "If it makes you happy," he said at last.

Quentin glanced sidelong at Eliot. He looked thoughtful. "It does. Do you think this is why normal people hold onto gods?"

Eliot laughed. "Oh, yes. We all have to believe in something that's at least a little impossible. I guess magicians have to dream a little bigger, though." He winked and grinned at Quentin. "So very well. Somewhere out there, I bet Alice is making fireworks out of stars, and making whole galaxies disappear, just to show she can. Now come on," he added, tugging Quentin back to the interior of the castle, "You can stop worrying about her, since she's obviously not sitting around worrying about you."

And maybe the thought was impossible, but Quentin held onto it as Eliot drew him back. The thought took just the edge off of his lingering sorrow, and that was enough. There was enough time to be happy here, if he worked at it.

He missed the sight of one of the stars winking at him. It couldn't possibly be Alice, but it would have comforted him to think it was. But perhaps he didn't need such comforting thoughts anymore. Perhaps he had enough already.

And maybe it would have pleased Alice to know Quentin was almost happy. Maybe she had forgotten about her old friends.

Maybe just the belief was comfort enough.


End file.
